Ninokuni : Wrath of the White Witch

What a delight Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is! It's charming but never cloying, complementing its vibrant cel-shaded art and good-natured child star with plentiful doses of wit and joy. The clever dialogue dips into a bottomless well of puns, keeping you grinning wide, if not laughing out loud at the constant goofiness. More importantly, this Japanese role-playing game possesses great soul, exploring a son's love for his mother, and the vast expanses he's prepared to cross in the hopes of a reunion. Hearts are broken and restored, hidden motives are revealed, and lost relationships again blossom, even after great evil has torn them asunder. This is a wonderful world that you will be eager to lose countless hours in as you adventure through its enticing realms. Oliver is the cherry-cheeked center of Ni no Kuni--the boy who would save the world, as so many youngsters do in RPGs. But the world he saves isn't his own. Oliver lives in Motorville, an Anytown, U.S.A. sort of place--the kind you might see depicted in a Norman Rockwell painting. Children laugh and play, cars drive slowly along the shrubbery-lined streets, and mothers shop for bottles of milk and sacks of foodstuffs.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Ni No Kuni is a clean, wholesome, uncomplicated love letter to the golden age of Japanese RPGs, to a time when sprite-based adventures across sprawling world maps and epic dungeons held supreme. In a certain light, it's surprising to see the need for such a letter, but nearing the end of the PlayStation 2, the traditional single-player JRPG fell out of favor. The global rise of MMORPGs, the advent of open-world Western RPGs and darker-themed JRPGs like Shin Megami Tensei, and the saturation of JRPGs themselves during the era led to a developmental shift, illustrated by the popular Final Fantasy series as it moved beyond Final Fantasy X to its more recent downfall with Final Fantasy XIV Online. The classic JRPG is in dire need of a revival, and Ni no Kuni is the phoenix down. Joining forces with renowned animation house Studio Ghibli, developer Level-5 has channeled their experience with Rogue Galaxy and Dragon Quest VIII in creating the light-hearted story and environments of Ni No Kuni. Fans of the Dragon Quest series and Studio Ghibli's prior feature films like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away will find familiar elements in abundance: characters with rounded faces, panoramic landscapes with a healthy variety of saturated colors, a sweeping orchestral soundtrack, adorable creatures with only two bright eyes for a face, and a journey that spans in traditional order from plains to forests, deserts, mountains, and islands.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch

When Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch was announced as a collaboration between the famed Studio Ghibli and respected developer Level-5, my eyes lit up. Level-5's hits take classic gameplay systems and turn them inside out, while Studio Ghibli's films journey through fantastical lands with breathtaking visuals and deep life lessons. For months now, my imagination has been overflowing with Ni No Kuni's possibilities – but the reality doesn't match up to its potential. Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a respectable experience, but it's far from a Ghibli or Level-5 masterpiece. Ni No Kuni transports you between a real world and a fantastical one, the heart and soul of the game. It has childlike wonder around every bend – mushrooms grow as staircases, animals rule kingdoms, and Ghibli-inspired monsters meld creativity into every encounter. The vast environments have stunning visuals, and you're rewarded with a ship for sea exploration and eventually your very own dragon to control. Sadly, the story and characters don't have the same allure as the world. Because Studio Ghibli's name is attached to it, I was expecting strong characterization and narrative.

Ni no Kuni Review: Expect the Expected

In case you haven't noticed, we at 1UP have been a bit wary about using the term "Japanese RPG" within the past year or so. With experiences like The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Dark Souls eroding our preconceived notions about role-playing games from the East, the term "JRPG" is rapidly losing the meaning it once had -- especially now that American creations like Costume Quest, Cthulu Saves the World, and Penny Arcade 3 have adopted certain design tropes once associated with another country. But even as the exciting world of genre classification continues to spin into total anarchy, some developers take no issue with delivering the expected; both Dragon Quest and Pokemon stand as excellent examples of developers continuing to iterate on a limited, time-tested formula, all while offering enough up new ideas to sustain the series. These two series may rely on ideas unchanged for decades, but they do so in a manner that keeps players engaged and addicted. The long-awaited Level-5/Studio Ghibli collaboration Ni no Kuni seems to understand the elements that define "Japanese RPG," but not the reasons why this genre grew so successful in the first place.

Ni no Kuni Wrath of the White Witch Review

Ni No Kuni reminds you just why you fell in love with the JRPG. I mean, it also reminds you of why you hate the genre. There's more than enough ammunition here for the doubters to fill their boots with delicious insult pie and other such effortless metaphors. But those willing to open themselves up to it - those who give Ni No Kuni the slightest of chances - will find a genuinely enchanting experience; a game that filled me, a hoary old cynic, with a genuine childlike wonder. It's on the banned word list, but here we go: Ni No Kuni is charming.To boil it down to its constituent mechanical parts is to do us all a disservice, but it can hardly be called a review if it just waxes lyrical about how much it made the reviewer grin like a moron. Plus it's worth pointing out that this, being a Level-5 production, is up there with the cream of the crop in JRPG mechanics. Discounting White Knight Chronicles.The absolute central core of Ni No Kuni can be described in two distinct ways of playing: exploration and battles. There's nothing mind-bending in either, with exploration straddling the middle ground between Skyrim's open world and Final Fantasy XIII's closed corridors.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Review

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch looks familiar, archetypical and even safe, but underneath the hood, it's none of those things. While developer Level-5 has stayed the course with many conventions of the genre, it's likewise bucked the disturbing trend in JRPGs of emphasizing all of the wrong things, instead focusing on what any game that demands dozens of hours should: roping you in with solid gameplay, complemented by a wonderful story told by characters you care about. As such, Ni No Kuni gets its hooks into you almost immediately, and it refuses to let go. We've come a long way since the glory days of the Japanese role-playing game in the 1990s. Indeed, many would argue that perhaps we've come too far. Today, the genre is split between the heavily watered-down and the absurdly niche. This leaves many of us floating somewhere in the middle, in the well-worn ether that, for some reason, too few developers and publishers have dare tread in the 21st century. But with Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, Level-5 has delivered something special: a JRPG that feels like the games of yore, looks like the games of tomorrow, and draws heavy inspiration from the classics old-school JRPGs fans adore. Oliver and his friends. Ni No Kuni's story revolves around a young boy named Oliver. Oliver is a citizen of Motorville, a serene hamlet seemingly ripped out of a photograph of 1950s America.

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (Preview)

Ni no Kuni brings Studio Ghibli's eye candy to PS3RPGs rarely fare well when it comes to demos. This is a genre where mechanics, character and plot development can and will take their sweet time, building momentum and relevance over the course of dozens of hours. The idea that a 10 minute morsel can somehow be representative of the full experience... well, it's frankly preposterous.After its first showing at Namco's Global Gamers Day, Ni no Kuni is no exception to this rule. But by golly, it looks gorgeous.Perhaps we should expect nothing less from Studio Ghibli's first sortie into games development, working in conjunction with Level 5, but even so, the cel-shaded cast are strikingly beautiful. Even when you're simply traversing the overworld there's an abundance of charm: anime monsters patrol the landscape, and if you get too near a Metal Gear-style exclamation mark appears over their heads, at which point they give chase with angry-but-cute little faces. Elsewhere, a sailboat bobs lazily in a small bay, flanked by rocky outcrops. Climb aboard and you can set out to sea, cutting through the rippling waves.

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (Preview)

Take an animation studio beloved the world over, and pair them up with what just might be Japan's fastest growing game maker and publisher -- it sounds perfect. Level-5 (Professor Layton, Dragon Quest IX) teamed up with Studio Ghibli (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) to create two RPGs (same name, but different platforms) that feature Pokemon like monster catching mechanics. It's called Ni no Kuni and it sounds like an amazing game. Last year's Ni no Kuni: The Another World failed to set the world on fire after its release in Japan despite its impressive pedigree. Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a part follow-up, part remake for the PS3, and it sounds amazing, but the reality doesn't quite live up to expectations. If Ni no Kuni seems so amazing on paper, why am I so bored when I actually sit down to play the game? I've put around four hours into the Japanese version, and despite an amazing art style, wonderful voice acting, and the game featuring a charming cast of characters that really would be at home in a film by Hayao Miyazaki (Ghibli's most famed director), the moment to moment gameplay of the game is dreadfully dull.